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posted by martyb on Tuesday February 21 2017, @12:48PM   Printer-friendly
from the not-ignoring-ignorance dept.

From the I've-heard-enough-and-won't-take-it-anymore department, http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-39024648

The BBC reports that former Congressman Rush Holt, now part of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), is the spokesman for a movement "standing up for science".

His remarks reflect growing concern among researchers that science is disregarded by President Trump.

Scientists across the US plan to march in DC on 22 April.

[...] "To see young scientists, older scientists, the general public speaking up for the idea of science. We are going to work with our members and affiliated organisations to see that this march for science is a success."

Mr Holt made his comments at the AAAS annual meting in Boston as President Trump appointed a fierce critic of the Environmental Protection Agency as its head. Scott Pruitt has spent years fighting the role and reach of the EPA.


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  • (Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday February 21 2017, @05:53PM

    by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Tuesday February 21 2017, @05:53PM (#469790) Journal

    That was a pretty well written response. I enjoy good natured debate with you. No sarc.

    Thanks. And I'll counter by saying that I appreciate what you wrote in response, which makes a bit more sense to me and adds context. I'd even agree with more of it (though of course certainly not all).

    For example, I agree with you that there are lots of problems in academia (and admitted that in my original response). On the other hand, I think your post overestimates the political influence among STEM academics. I brought up Chomsky because I think he's a clear example of the sort of thing I assume you're talking about, but he's not a scientist. (And frankly, I'm not a big fan of his linguistics stuff either.) But if you start looking at science and engineering faculty, you'll find a lot more diversity in political views than among humanities profs (on average). Still, I'm not going to deny that there's generally a liberal slant, but if STEM folks are pushing agendas, I think it's usually about their own ideas and research -- they want to get attention for their findings, and that sometimes can blind them. But their pet theories on string theory or knot theory (in math, couldn't resist) or, I don't know... mechanical or chemical engineering designs aren't necessarily likely to be driven by Marxism or whatever liberal ideology you fear.

    Lets look at actual science, not political activism masquerading as science and see what Trump opposes:

    Yes, I take your point that a lot of scientific research seems to have little political connection mixed in. Which is the point I was just making in the preceding paragraph. And that's why I reacted so harshly to your initial post which seemed to lump together all of academia as if its scientific output was an example of "doublethink." Whatever the criticisms of the tenure system or other elements of academia, the vast majority of stuff coming out of it still doesn't fit your initial narrative. But you've clarified that, so let's move on.

    I could keep going but there is a distinct and fairly easy to detect difference between professionally done science by people having personal political beliefs and professionally done political propaganda done by people hiding behind a personal STEM degree.

    First off, I agree with this in general. My problem comes up because there are certain areas of science that appear to come into conflict with Trump's policy proposals -- and those are the ones that are going to likely be branded with whatever Trump's new moniker is going to be for the equivalent of "fake news" in science... "fake research"? Is that a phrase? Of course I doubt Trump is going to care much about multi-order graphs or cancer screening papers or other examples you gave... UNLESS they end up coming in conflict with a policy proposal. What if the cancer screening is related to abortion or to not receiving vaccines or whatever the political topic of the day is? In that case, I have little confidence in the Trump administration staying out of it, even if the researchers in question have no political agenda.

    And of course the elephant in the room here is climate science. It is concerning when the new guy heading the EPA is a guy who publicly fought the EPA on numerous occasions and has received major donations from the industries he is now supposed to regulate. These are major conflicts of interest that have little to do with science. So even if you want to criticize the "climate science consensus" because you think it displays political bias or whatever, matters are likely not helped by bringing in someone else who has major conflicts of interest in this area. So no, I don't have confidence in the Trump administration in cases like this -- and it has little to do directly with their stance on science: it has to do with the potential for corruption when you put someone in charge who has major conflicts of interest. But yes, I do think that such conflicts of interest COULD impact the way researchers and scientists are pushed; it obviously does in many big businesses when DuPont puts out studies showing their chemicals are "safe" (without extensive testing) or Big Pharma puts out drug studies or whatever. Even if I believed that climate change was a giant hoax, I STILL wouldn't want Big Oil dictating U.S. environmental policy for all sorts of reasons.

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  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday February 21 2017, @09:03PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday February 21 2017, @09:03PM (#469878)

    There is an interesting side issue that there is no China environment and no USA environment there's just one environment, and that muddies the waters such that if a local conflict of interest dude is none the less an arbitrary 100x stricter than China compared to the Obama dude who was 1000x stricter, it doesn't really matter in the big picture. Other than maybe we're getting a higher quality of life / better economy with the guy who's only 99% clean than the guy who was 99.9% clean, while something that isn't changing is virtually all our pollution comes from China regardless under either policy, we're just a wealthier nation with one option.

    Much as it can be interesting to express global warming in terms of "miles toward the equator" or "miles per hour toward the equator" it would be interesting to specify a year. Yeah I don't think anyone is proposing a pre- '70 environmental policy. So we're talking about rolling back environmental protection from 2010s era to the filthy 90s or what? I mean, no one is proposing pollution the Mississippi river until it catches fire, or polluting the air until LA tomorrow is as bad as Beijing today. That can be an extremely hard political sell that its a crisis to roll all the way back to the 90s, perhaps, which weren't that bad really.